BY EVA CHENG
News of what appear to be spontaneous rebellions by workers against attacks on their social rights and living standards resulting from the Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy's drive to restore capitalism continue to seep out of China.
On March 26 in Baiyun district of Guiyang, the capital of the south-western Guizhou province, which is one of China's poorest, 1500 workers staged a public demonstration of their anger at having not received their wages for a year, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (ICHRD).
On the same day in Henan province's Xinye county, 500 workers at a fertiliser factory also resorted to protest action to press for wages in arrears, also behind for a year.
In Lanzhou, Gansu province, 5000 taxi drivers had had enough of the rising road taxes, fines and what they believed to be onerous regulations. They went on strike on March 13 and delivered a petition to the Lanzhou city government. ICHRD said the protesters were beaten by the police but they fought back. Ten protesters were arrested.
Drivers in Lanzhou confirmed the incident with Agence France Presse but local officials insisted the strike never happened. According to AFP, one driver said the taxi drivers who didn't join the action had their cars smashed by the strikers.
In the city of Datong in Shanxi province, 2000 coal miners from the soon to be closed Baidong mine blocked the roads and clashed with police on March 8 over inadequate redundancies, reported ICHRD.
The 3500 mine workers had been offered 20,000 yuan (US$249) in redundancy pay. But with many of them already having contracted work-related health problems and facing the loss of free health care as well, workers took action to demand a higher redundancy sum.
One miner was arrested but the remaining strikers came to his defence, surrounding the local police station to press for his release.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said on March 16 that an unofficial workers' organiser, Li Jiaqing, was tried in February for involvement in an occupation of a paper mill last August by 100 workers. The exact location of the mill was not specified but Li was reportedly charged for "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order".
Li was arrested on August 7 and the next day 500 police forced their way into the factory and arrested 20 workers.
At the March annual meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing, delegate Wang Daming told the AFP that the number of petitions of all sorts rose 37% last year, with up to 85% of them considered "justified" complaints. Wang said: "Group [protest] incidents are on the rise with [protesters resorting to] increasingly acute behaviour. Some local township and county government organs have their offices smashed, roads and railways blocked, police and armed personnel beaten, and public facilities destroyed."